It is a common refrain on the right wing of the United States body politic that the academic institution has become a waste of time and money. Why would you want to waste your money and time getting some BS degree in English, Communication, History, or a foreign language? All of these humanities have fallen so far as to be worthless. What do you get out of it in the end: an $80,000 piece of paper? “If you have to go to college,” many will say, “you had best pick a STEM field.” A wise decision in this economy perhaps. Or is this too cynical? What is the value of enjoying or learning about the humanities? For the sake of this discussion, let’s focus on the value of writing and thought and how those things lend themselves towards a deeper understanding of our search for knowledge and life in this brief, exciting time on this Earth.
Why should we consider the realm of literature, poetry, and nonfiction? We know well enough that Science, Technology, and Mathematics offer us easily transferable skills into the widget factory. The production of goods and technology bring many benefits, though they do not comprise the whole of life. The things we seek on a daily basis that bring us happiness and meaning in this life are not only material but also abstract. Even the poorest among us transcend the mere reduction that Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs imparts on men. “Self-actualization” and the more recently used “transcendence” aspect can be found amongst the most impoverished in the world. Spiritual needs that move us beyond our physical needs are part of what makes us different from the animals.
We find inspiration and wisdom from writings and speeches that purely consumeristic or scientific productions cannot satisfy. If you were to have all of the shiny, electronic screens in the world but nothing to enjoy with them, what good would they be? Our films, television, games, and even YouTube videos more often than not have an essential element of creativity that comes from our ability to enjoy abstract things like presentation, narrative, aesthetic, tone, and content. These things satisfy (to an extent) these needs on a daily basis, otherwise we would not be hooked to our smartphones which grant us low effort access to this kind of entertainment.
However, we are not here to ponder the excesses of smartphone usage. Instead we should consider those things which are the true nutrition of the soul in this realm. Foremost among them stands the gift and ability to read and write. In order to write well, one must be able to read. As we are memetic creatures, human beings generate things based on a previously experienced or felt event, idea, or thing. We do not always fully understand those things deeply, however the marvelous ability of the human mind allows us to interpret things which we don’t fully understand and build upon them. Sometimes this is done accurately and intuitions or speculations may helpfully improve our ability to interact with an idea.
Stories take a complex or compelling idea and narrativize it so that we may relate to it in a more human way as an example. Oftentimes, our misunderstanding can lead to something like a heresy in contrast to the substance of an idea. If you were to read the Iliad and perceive that glory has no value in light of the horrors of war, then you would misunderstand the narrative deeply. When one does not write, he finds himself more prone to misinterpretation than one who does. This statement should be self-evident to the well read scholar of any kind of work, idea, or theology that has also debated someone with little reading in the same subject matter.
Writing is the confluence of poiesis and mimesis. As previously said, we are memetic beings, meaning that we imitate and interpret life through things experienced and known. However, men are also full of poietic potential, the ability to create. Whether you read a story, poem, or history, you are reading something that came from somebody who themselves is creating from something. Even the most wacky ideology or bizarre poetry has its roots in some prior inclination that has been informed by experience or ideas outside of themselves. To better understand what we are reading, it is worthwhile to try one’s hand at creating something ourselves.
Fiction and prose give us an excellent opportunity as writers to learn how to understand narrative. Narrative offers us much more than pure logic and this-therefore-that thinking. Engaging with a narrative requires empathy and sympathy, which in turn allows us to imagine ourselves in a situation we may not be familiar with. Through this we can visualize situations and people that we may otherwise only get snippets of from reality. The greatest novels possess a certain transcendent quality in that regardless of time or place, the characters and experiences we come alongside connect to us at a deeply human level. To write a story is to try and distill certain archetypes and personalities in human nature and to display them in a compelling conflict or journey that we find to be larger than a mere facet of our individual experience. Instead, we are practicing the art of studying qualitative human experience and attempting to make that not only interpretable but also sympathetic to bring a fabricated experience into a realistic or at least understandable frame.
Poetry brings us into a much different space of writing. Poetry is not merely “raw emotion” but rather brings us down to the raw essence of language. It explores and pushes the boundaries by which our words are wielded by using their purest form. The imagery best evoked by poetry should be carried in the rhythm and verbalization of each word. We are caught up with narrative for its overarching ideas, whereas with poetry the immediacy of its language paints a picture of an experience or idea that we grapple with in that moment. When we engage with composing a poetic piece, we are trying to distill an emotion, story, or experience into a moment of language. This interaction goes beyond the rational and delves into the feeling of what words give us.
Lastly, Nonfiction, our most straightforward kind of writing, helps us to construct our ideas. When we sit down to write an argument or essay from a certain perspective, we are forced to sit with our own thoughts intentionally, rather than letting our thoughts rattle around independently in our heads. When we read what we have written, we see what we meant to say vs. what we actually say. One of these is most often more compelling than the other. It is this self reflection that enables us to reflect on our own thinking and to take rambling emotions and intuitions and to point them at an objective or bounded idea.
When building an argument or perspective for others to engage with, we should not just solipsistically throw our opinions around. I cannot know what you, the reader, thinks at any given time unless you tell me. However, it is required of me, the writer, to imagine what you may perceive in my words. This imagination may be incorrect, yet, while respecting your intelligence and comprehension, I am intending to be as reasonable and intelligible as possible. Yet, as a writer, to over explain every little point would not be to respect the reader. We have to imagine a certain level of comprehension exists when crafting an argument. This same logic applies to giving any kind of persuasive talk at a men’s group, company meeting, or even when trying to convince your friends to come join you on a trip. In writing persuasively or in describing something, we are playing a game of bridging the gap between our own imagination and the perceptions of others.
Now you may not become an award winning novelist or speaker due to taking on writing as a practice in your own life, however, you will very likely become a better thinker. It is not often outside of intimate conversation with a loved one that we can get a good insight into our own thinking, yet the act of writing invites us to seek that out. Whether it is a song’s lyrics that you find in your imagination or a pithy remark, there are manifold opportunities to delve into your own perception and to try it against your own reason. It is in the realm of generation that we can see if our ideas match up against the world around us.